New Article: Haklai, Israeli Settlers in the West Bank in Comparative Perspective

Haklai, Oded. “The Decisive Path of State Indecisiveness: Israeli Settlers in the West Bank in Comparative Perspective.” In Settlers in Contested Lands. Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts (ed. Oded Haklai & Neophytos Loizides; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014): 17-39.

 

 

Excerpt

Many analysts identify Israeli settlements in the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war as one of the key issues that needs to be resolved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The significance of settlers in the context of this conflict derives from the conventional perception that partition of the territory into two sovereign states is the preferred and most feasible conflict resolution mechanism. More generally, partition solutions to ethnonational conflict rely on the assumption that the intensity of hostilities between the warring ethnic groups makes it impossible for them to live peacefully together in a single state. The underpinning, usually implicit, premise is that ethnic sorting is required for such conflict management; Israeli settlements in the territories designated for a Palestinian stat are seen as an impediment in this quest.